Yale School of Nursing to leave New Haven; will relocate to Orange/West Haven campus (video)

The new Yale School of Nursing building
Michael Marsland, Yale University

NEW HAVEN - Yale University announced Thursday it is moving its School of Nursing out of the city and relocating it to an existing building on its West Campus in Orange and West Haven.

The move is set for the summer of 2013 and will involve all of the school's faculty and staff. About 450 students, administrators and faculty use the current building at 100 Church St. South.

"One of our objectives here is to create a space that, for lack of a better word, is communal," said Margaret Grey, dean of the school. "We thought a lot about having education and research spaces that are consistent with how we should be teaching today and in the future."

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Yale's West Campus is a 136-acre compound of 17 buildings, located just off of Interstate 95 in West Haven and Orange. Yale bought the property in 2007 and gradually has upgraded facilities and moved personnel there.

Various research, technology and art conservation programs already are based on the West Campus, but the nursing school will be the first major program moved there. It will nearly double the number of people at the West Campus, according to Yale.

"It really brings that sense of all things Yale to the West Campus," said Scott Strobel, vice president of West Campus planning and development. "The goal of the West Campus is to be fully integrated with the mission of the university."

But not everyone involved is happy about the prospect of moving.

Grey noted that a recent survey of nursing school students indicated that while 70 percent of them either approved of the move or felt neutral about it, 30 percent of them did not approve of the idea.

Grey said the idea of moving first came up a year ago.

"There was a significant amount of hesitation," she said. But as she and her staff saw the potential for increasing and upgrading the school's teaching space, "it became clear this was too good of an opportunity."

Grey stressed that most of the school's 330 students were involved in the New Haven community and inner city health care programs, and such involvement would remain a cornerstone of the school's mission.

She also said the nursing school and Yale's School of Medicine have an agreement to share some teaching and seminar space on both campuses. Shuttle service between the sites will increase to every 20 minutes, instead of hourly.

Strobel said the nursing school will be moving into the former administrative headquarters of Bayer Corp. It is a four-story building that has both office space and interior support space.

Between now and next summer, Yale will renovate the building to construct classroom and community spaces suitable for a teaching environment, Strobel explained. This will include knocking down some interior walls.

The building already has a full complement of desks and chairs, Strobel added. "It's a beautiful building, in great shape," he said.

The current nursing school building on Church Street South is the former Lee High School. The nursing school moved to the site in the mid-1990s, Grey said. Other Yale programs in the building, which include information technology personnel, a dialysis center and Yale-New Haven Hospital, are not part of the announced move to the West Campus.

The nursing school will celebrate its 90th anniversary in the fall of 2013.